doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Drilling questioned

I recently purchased a Merkel 961L 30-06/30-06/20ga. As my eyes can no longer adequately see iron sights I am going to place a scope on it. I am considering a Luepold 1x4X VXII or a VX3 1.5x5X. The VX3 reportedly has better low light characteristics so that would be my choice but I am concerned my ability to judge the lead of a bird will be compromised due to the 1.5 magnification. I have never used a scope on a shotgun before so I am in the dark about doing so. Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks

J

Ordinarily, if a scope is on a drilling, it is not intended to be used while bird shooting. Since you do not "aim" a shotgun, the sights for shotgun work are superfluous. Many competitive shooters remove the beads completely so they wont have anything to distract their concentration on the target. I would expect that if you concentrate on the target, and keep both eyes open, you wont even notice the scope.

My thoughts, of course.

Regards

GKT

Agree with Greg, if one is hunting with a drilling for fur & fowl, the scope is usually not attached unless one is on stand or has time to mount it before shooting some fur.

I formed that opinion for the most typical SxS over rifle drilling. Yours is a double rifle with a shotgun, almost a DGR setup. I'd still carry the scope.

I hunt with drillings a great deal and hunted in Germany for a number of years and there is no "usually" about it. The scope is only for the rifle barrel and perhaps for a .22 insert barrel for the right shotgun tube should you have one. It is also why a drilling was/is always equipped with a dismountable scope system such as claw mounts so the hunter can shift from scoped rifle to true shotgun and back quickly and with no change of rifle point of aim. If you scope it, do it for the rifle, and do it with quality mounts.

A friend who hunts in Africa most years always takes a drilling with a 2X , or so, scope. He uses this for both birds and haired game. By the way, he's pretty deadly with the scoped drilling on clay birds. I have shot his drilling at clays and find it easy to use.

I hunted ruffed grouse and turkey for 10+ years in Virginia and WV with a German combi gun equipped with a Leupold VXII scope with magnification set at 1,5X. Best ruffed grouse rig I ever used. Om going away birds I never had a problem with scope. However, I have been shooting scoped rifles at running game since a kid, with lots of success.

Having only one shot for grouse, I picked my shots carefully and scored much higher % hits than with any other gun, well over 50%. There was also great population of grouse during those years. I could hunt lots and became rather familier with where and when grouse were. A grouse not shot at and maybe wounded was a grouse I could hunt another day(s), till I finally got good shot. Never since then have I had such extensive hunting of same area.

I loosely lump drillings into those designed to be used as nice shotgun on flying birds and those designed to be used mostly (nearly entirely?) from high seats. The latter is not very good for shooting flying birds. The kombi gun I used is well designed for shooting flying birds and still one of shotguns I am most hitting with.

Niklas